


The Ways of Wives

by dancerinthedrink



Category: Doctor Faustus - Christopher Marlowe
Genre: Anal Sex, Deal with a Devil, Kissing, M/M, Marriage, Oral Sex, Purple Prose, a thorough and complete abuse of the thesaurus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-19
Updated: 2019-05-19
Packaged: 2020-03-07 23:39:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18883642
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancerinthedrink/pseuds/dancerinthedrink
Summary: Mephistopheles finds joy in the arms of a dead man walking.





	The Ways of Wives

When the call falls upon Mephistopheles, he is intrigued. Rarely do mortals deign to request him by name, the braggarts instead fell to the invisible feet of Lucifer himself or else felt for legions of daemons to satisfy their corrupted yen, and still Mephistopheles appeared to be abused and play the role of all-glorious jinn until such was the hour the damned soul was returned to his master’s possession, safely nestled in the crevices of which the grand firmament is blind. 

So his flight an eager one, for the one who knows strongly the census of Hell, for the challenger he shall envelop with his leathery bat wings, and hold him in an embrace of magic until the hourglass has been flipped for its final draining, and the cursed mortal is spirited away to their eternal rack. 

This Faustus is a bold thing for what it is made of. Underfed, a creature light as parchment held together by the stick of ink and spite, his head is no more than a skull poorly ornamented with skin and fur with the weight of the insomnious study of a ruthless academic drawing black caves below his eyes. Drawn inward, his posture is that of a man far senior. How was it that this Faustus contained seventy years in only thirty? He hadn’t made such a pact before, had he? And there is no fear in his stumbling gait, stumbling as a somnambulist as he shambles forward to examine and spurn Mephistopheles’s true form in the clinical dismissal expected of his profession. The eyes, however, are clarion emeralds, cool and viperous in a way that the devil conceals the chill that courses through him when metamorphosing into a more pleasing figure. 

The deal is writ in blood. Nectar to run to poison that the doctor is hesitant to spill. He hath opened the bodies of many men, cadavers on the slab, yet still flummoxes at the pulsing of his own fluids; languidly they pollute his white cheeks like the Nile over the dry plains of Egypt. Praps it reminds him how easy they are to drain. 

With a grin cut like a crescent moon across the midnight, the devil bares his arm, a sign of peace and goodwill, and lets a stream of rotten blood twist over his skin, pierced by a dagger sharp with the lost knowledge of Damascus, conjured by a dark magic from the ruptured breast of a fallen soldier. The doctor is transfixed by the path the dark blood takes, serpentine and tempting as was the silver-tongued caresses of Glutton in the Garden. In a mockery of ashes, Mephistopheles drags a thumb through the wet and then to Faust’s forehead, north to south, west to east, the fall and the evolution. Faust accepts by the merest blink and nod, and the devil takes the cool flesh of a mortal in his hand. 

And underneath the translucent skin lay, pulsing and wriggling in the hideous vein of worms culled from the womb of their earthly mother, lengths of red and blue spun down his arm. Red as the soft and fertile soil, the flush of the plagued flux victims, the fire which devours and preserves - a vivacious slither from crooked elbow to cocked wrist - and then blue, the same, of the poisonous ocean, the lower and lesser ocean as what the angels christened it, for it was paltry to the course of the sky: rollicking, kaleidoscopic, full of life for life’s sake, for God’s sake as he chose whom to populate his heavens with by way of murder and crippling. Had Mephistopheles a soul, he would have exchanged it for the sight once more to cross his eyes, but he had no desire nor want for the sight. It was Covetousness who did the wanting, the yearning, the crying out at all hours when his crock needed refilling of gold or other luxuries; it was for Mephistopheles to serve and suppress his resentment of Fair Lucifer. 

He had loved the angel, but the devil was not the spirit he followed to rebellion. His voice was not the voice raised in the pursuit of love, the voice that shook in fear and agony as the wanton militia was cast through that opulent sky, blackness rent with starlight, down down down to the sweating core to make preparations for God’s naughty children, nor was it his voice that promised democracy, a new method of life free from the tyranny of Heaven, not the voice which coaxed the sun off the horizon it sang so sweetly. It sang so sweetly God fashioned nightingale hence. The only singing was now singularly raised in chorus to the wails of the damned, equivalent in wretchedness. And Mephistopheles found no familiarity nor joy nor kinship in the spirit of the devil Lucifer. 

So under his new king, Mephistopheles served. And now he would serve Faustus. 

Presented thus with an alabaster block to shape, the mortal draws the dagger in a line that was almost perfectly straight, his doctor’s hand tempered in slight by the sting of the blade. Faustus steals to his writing desk. None but air Mephistopheles held as the doctor dug his quill through the cut and delivered his autograph in the crudest calligraphy about the contract.

He asks for a wife. 

Did he not have company enough? Could he not have company enough? The scholars of the university in their black bundhaube with whom he could debate and ponder the eccentricities of ancient texts, the whores and barmaidens to sit on his lap, learned in the career of pleasure, the chefs in the kitchen to fill his belly with bratwurst and quark, the fraulein stock to bathe his floors in suds, and Mephistopheles himself to be his constant and faithful companion were all crass to the empyrean bliss of a wife.

But it is not for Mephistopheles to give counsel, so instead, he gives a wife.

The creature is grotesque, a she-devil oozing with the lusts of lovers ere her Faustus, but it is honest. Wives veil their odiousness under creams and ropes of jewels, but Hell is honest and its daughters ugly. Faustus does not request a glamour like the one Mephistopheles wears. He has learned and refuses her. 

Mephistopheles approaches. His master doctor cowers behind his wooden chair. The devil takes the hand still wet with blood and pulls the trembling mass of anatomy to where holier creatures carry a heart.

“What need dost thou have for marriage?” The question is gentle as the rain over lady’s smock. For a time they are mummified in the moment, still as Faustus calms, and for an even briefer moment, Mephistopheles can feel Faustus settle comfortably in the depression between his ribs. But he is rejected. The devil falls away with the lightness of sulphur when Faustus tears himself from his arms, onyxial strips of hair pasted to the skin flush with firey bite of Mephistopheles’s breath. They face each other, and somewhere in the abyss of Mephistopheles loops a serrated cord asphyxiating what little courage he has. 

“To give what no other can.”

“And what might that be?” Mephistopheles, despite the observations of millennia, was ignorant of connubial customs and proud of it. He was cognizant of the couplings and jealousies of the succubi and incubi, but he had found no logic in their origins. 

“To love and be loved in return, to blossom like the oranges of China and split juicy and ripe on the edge of a knife, to conceal confidences in a locked chest, to cloud themselves in what pleases a husband best, to stand at my side and twitter as the dove does at the dawning and as the crested, tawny crow does at the setting at my cleverness, to belong exclusively to myself and I, in turn, to her. That is what I wanted of a wife. Thou hath given me soot to stardust.” Faustus breaks the beam that stretches beautifully between them and grasps at the chair he stands behind so behind them both crouches the devil, free to gaze at the dark cloth affixed by exertion to Faust’s skeletal back.

His master is tense. He can see it in the peak of his shoulders, adamantine. His master is displeased. Mephistopheles fits himself around the curves of Faust’s backside, a support to the waist so that his Faustus needn’t hold his own weary body for the duck still bleeds, a stroke to part his hair from his skin, a kiss on the downy neck to dispense pain.

Honeyed, the devil says: “Must a wife perform the tasks thus Sweet Faustus? Couldst not a friend satisfy in her stead? If it is pleasuring of the body thou desirest let me conjure a score of decorous maids. What wit a bride possessing shall not be sin by leave of a curate’s confessing. Didst thou not call forth sin? So how doth a chaste union complete thee?” With hands much in the skill and practice of soothing, Mephistopheles loosens the straps on Faust’s shirt, rustling the linen until he finds rise from a nipple, doubtlessly a cheerless color as his other flesh rather than the rosen shades of lustier bodies, and cradles the flat tit. Mephistopheles expels content hotly and wants more.

“Thou askest many questions fiend. Hath King Lucifer not illuminated you on the matters sinners themselves abide? My devil is an innocent one.” Faustus, shifting against the steadfast figure abaft, convulses in hiccoughing laughter, weakness curving his elbows in bends. “A wife is for everness. Whores last til the coin runneth dry.” The words dissipate to nothing as Mephistopheles rolls his thumb.

“What else does a wife do?”

“They treasure their husbands. He is their king, their god.”

“Hmm. Are women blasphemers then?” His spindle-like fingers play over the laces of Faustus’s breeches, plucking the strings to release a dulcet quiver by Faust’s throat, light as the thumb over his nipple is hard. The doctor’s arms stay parallel on the chair, but clenching tight to his body, he urges Mephistopheles on, nudging in a motion that begs for more. Great fumes of longing pour off the man in inexorable waves with a potency intense enough to plunge Mephistopheles into a maenadic frenzy.

Many moons have waxed and waned since this man has been touched by a hand that wasn’t stuffed with coin, for only king’s ransom would beguile a tart to open her poxed legs for a body repellant as Faustus’s. No matter that under their icing a whore’s beauty was comparable to Arachne after her encounter with the Wise One, they would wrinkle their powdered little noses until their faces crumpled inward, and Faustus ceded his desire to the unchiding embrace of study. How many moons? Hundreds, praps even thousands. Any less couldn’t explain why Faustus was keening like a bitch without a mount after so few caresses. Though praps it was not the length of time since contact, after all, whores had eyelids to shut and taxes and debts to pay, and thus would not turn away a goodly client. But they did not show him any love. And a man, despite all loathesomeness, deserved to be loved.

“Not at all. They are dutiful worshippers, Their hands-” A strangulating moan. Outlined in flax, heavy in the curl of his fist, Mephistopheles holds Faustus’s cock, worrying lightly over the head. “Their hands are often folded in prayer. So very loyal to their masters, like dogs to be kicked by soft leather shoes.” He pants now, drinking in air like a saint on desert pilgrimage, being empty of water, swallows the sourest wine like it is the holy host itself. The material that separates them grows a moist spot, and Mephistopheles can stand it no longer, entering the breeches to toy with the burning cock, hot as the fires that lick the heretics in their tombs, he lets his ragged fingernails bite into the skin. Sweat tangles in his coarse, dark hair, and Faustus claws at his wool-thick tunic. There is a furnace at the core of this man, but he need not worry he will melt, Mephistopheles’s heart is cold enough to save him from ruin.

“Their hands, aye, their hands. They art soft as well, are they not? They stroke a weary brow tenderly. And what of their mouths?” 

“Their mouths?” Faustus can barely muster strength enough to rise above a whisper. His head rests back. His eyes flicker. Mephistopheles takes his hand from out the doctor’s shirt to catch a moan on his finger. His tongue is dry as that same sainted desert.

“Yes. What do they do with their mouths? Do they speak? Are they clever when they do? And what of their tongues and teeth, sharp I would think. Do they sing? It would be sweet I think. So many men hath fallen to the silvery purr of a woman’s lips my mind believes something of worth comes by their throats. There are no women in Hell. There are the she-devils and she-daemons and crouching beasts which hold the shape of women and the madame souls in torments with voices guttural like the retching of a dipsomanic fool, but nothing which resembles the matronly beauty men of earth proclaim their heart and hearth for, yet Eve must have used her mouth to convince Adam to join her sin for she was not a beautiful enough thing to use her eyes. Or,” his lips hover over the nape of his neck, “would your feminine ideal hold her tongue?”

“She would be very liberal with her tongue.” In response the devil swears; God’s name has never been a sweeter poison in his mouth. He drags the spearlike tip of his tongue around the pulse that thrums in the doctor’s ear then sinks his teeth in the plump earlobe and gnaws on it, tasting bitterness. The doctor spits out another moan before he continues: “And never close her mouth. But she would never speak.” A stirring whimpers between Mephistopheles’s legs at the quaver in Faustus’s voice. He can hardly bear it. 

He turns Faustus, and their cheeks brush when he does. The thin, dried worm lips have grown plump by way of worrying between teeth, drooping as their wearer suffers through gasps so large that his sunken belly taxes the seams of his shirt and the belly of Mephistopheles retreats when it feels a tremoring bit of rough fabric against his silken doublet. Those lips, those gasps, implore the devil for kisses. Soaked with perspiration, his skin is alight with the sparkling shivers of arousal, and he drops to his knees.

There are deep red lines etched into the phallus by the time Mephistopheles frees it from the laces it was so desperately straining against. The tip is swollen red, the bit of color on an otherwise grey cock. But it is a good size and length, so the color does nothing to prevent Mephistopheles from taking it into his mouth in reverence. Like at Catholic at the altar swallowing the body of Christ each Sunday, Mephistopheles feels a sublime, all-consuming tranquility as he runs his tongue in a crescent shape around the base of the phallus, suckling contentedly as his eyes fall shut. 

Faustus stumbles, unprepared to the sensation that utterly envelops him, and clutches at the edge of the desk to keep from toppling over. At first, he keeps his hands folded in his lap like a good lad, desperately concealing his own growing erection without cause to touch, then, under penalty of insanity, Mephistopheles reaches up, grips Faustus by his narrow hips and sucks him deeper. It is not the support he needs, for Faust still slumps over the wooden plane, helplessly thrusting as a virgin would in an equally virgin cunt. The devil peers up at his master’s face. Wreathed in rich scarlet ecstasy, Faustus releases the most delectably wanton moan. A weak echo seeps from the little space there is left in Mephistopheles’s mouth.

Under the rough tunic, the skin of the doctor’s back is supple, having forgone blemish of any sort, be they natural spots or the scars that plague men of a duplicitous temper, so Mephistopheles makes some of his own. The contracted scar will remain on Faustus as long as his life shall be, as the mark lay on Cain. It will be a lonely scar should it not be given brothers to play with. Thus, with nails thin and wicked as a daemon’s smiles, Mephistopheles etches sacraments unholy and divine, relishing the way Faustus arches in escape from the pain, and mouth watering at the sticky suction under his fingernails. Gently, more gently than necessary, Faustus pries away his hands and lets them tumble downwards.

Vengeful, Mephistopheles draws off the cock, and Faustus whimpers at the loss. He laps mildly at the liquor bleeding from the slit of it. There is no taste to him, but the way it slides over and coats his tongue racks his corpse with shivers of subservient lechery. He does not linger on his heels rather instead rising on his knees to drag the quick of fangs across the delicate skin, the easily puncturable veins, which he finds his Faustus does not like, scraping at his ears to force his pet away. He could so very simply hurt Faustus, but why would he want to? He is more contented in the art of pleasing, wish-granting, and chances a kiss on the softening organ. 

He takes the instrument of felicity - slowly, entirely - back into his mouth.

All at once a pair of strong hands grasp Mephistopheles about the crown of the head and shove him farther into the thicket of hair that adorns Faust’s pelvic realm. His cockhead weeps viscous streams of seed down his throat, goodly thing Mephistopheles has not need for breath nor can taste, but he would be glad to suffer a dangerous constriction of the throat and the bitter wine of Faustus’s body in order to please his master to the fullest extent. With a beastial grunt, Faustus rights himself, driving and directing. He leaves no ability of Mephistopheles to pleasure with lips or tongue but rather moves in and out of his mouth like it is the lower half of a woman. 

And Mephistopheles does not mind it such. He enjoys the sensation as if he was a man below and a woman above, the choking, the sucking further within is of no trouble. How Tiresias must have felt copulating after his transfiguration to female! So much a man beneath his breeches he is that he pushes up on Faustus’s cobbled boots for a rut. The doctor is all too sunk in the profound glory of fucking - mad as a jester, cackling at his own brilliance - to not oblige his servant, even indulges in flexing his toes within the shoes for his increased bliss.

Had he known such a bliss in Heaven? Would he had been permitted to seek it out? He thinks not as an unusual feeling begins to build inside, a twinkling feeling beginning under the nails of his curled toes and at the roots of his hair, cascading and rising until they meet at his scorching center, assembled by a concoction of cheeks and cock flushed with warm blood. Blessing all the seraphim, the archangels with scythes of gilded diamonds, the grotesqueries in the bowels of hell, the eight-eyed cherubims, the pulsing balls of starfire that gorge the veil from Heaven, a blooming, bursting exaltation pushes its way from his body in a exhausting blast in the way a marbled wellspring engraved with the regalia of griffins and unicorns gushes open to the amusement of guests masqued with faces of animals domestic and savage. Mephistopheles ascends to Heaven; he sees God and the Christ child ripened and they have the same face, the face of a cadaverous doctor who howls in a wolf’s song and bleats as one of Lucifer’s earthy tenements at the fear of lupus music. 

Faustus senses his expenditure, removing himself as gentlemen will. Mephistopheles is wrenched to his feet, careening into the arms of his master, his legs have fallen prey to numbness, and he can still feel a set erection on his thigh. Faustus turns them in a mockery of a waltz so Mephistopheles rests on the desk, still gasping into his neck.

“So,” Faustus says. “Thou art skilled.” Mephistopheles, with what little breath he bears, laughs.

“Aye. I have talents in all areas.” 

“As do I.” Again, a laugh. Suddenly, Mephistopheles doubles over, a sparkling of needles from his hips to his toes, but he does not fall, for Faustus is there to catch him. He feels at his throat, attentively sliding a supporting hand up and down his back. He quails, frown marring his sweet face. “Devil dear, dare I break the news to thee? Mine years of study have not prepared me to tell such a tale, yet I must, out of sheer bafflement, ask, didst thou ever come into tenure of a heart?” 

“Thy degree is misplaced in the meditation of theology. Thy hath no proper knowhow of the placement of innards. The heart is lower in stature.” Mephistopheles takes his wrist and replaces the lined palm above his breast where a withered thing eagerly seeks attention, leaping fast to the weight above. Faustus is satisfied with the solution, but as his hand slips away Mephistopheles is confused. He cannot fathom a time when he carried a rhythm within himself. He certainly never had a need for it, yet there it sat, nestled like a newly laid egg on a bed of dewy hay. Faustus hovers around Mephistopheles’s contemplation. 

“Thy legs art healed, thus to my wishes. They art fine legs, and I should not have them ruined or made crippled. I must say, however, the method of destruction be infinitely preferable to maimings of other mores. Wouldst thou mind if I were to fix the interruption of circulation in these legs? We know not if their current state shall remain in permanence.” Like a subject come to beg favor from his sovereign, Faustus kneels, already slackening the laces of the finely cut boots that decorate Mephistopheles, sewn from the finest leather, tanned off the backs of Odysseus and the Khan of the Chinese steppes. 

“Thou dost not require permission. Do as thou wish.” 

“But I wish to be granted with permission.”

“I grant.” And the chills that haunt his legs are multiplied by the thousands as Faustus removes his boots and begins to press at parts of his feet in varying degrees of expertise. Mephistopheles quivers, and a familiar flexing dances along in the space guarded by the crossing of his thighs. In a shot directly up his veins, Mephistopheles lashes in a mulish kick, an attack Faustus most deftly dodges. “Thou treatest me roughly dear doctor. I flinch at your slightest touch. But I do believe I have regained feeling in mine feet so thou may cease thy proddings.”

“Thy feet, yay. Thy legs, nay. Until thou art able to saunter through town without my shoulder to lie upon, I shall keep my touch focused on thy skin. Shouldst thou request I would replace thy boot, but it shall be harder to reach thine ankles.” He ascends. Along the waist of his breeches, Faustus sweeps crooked fingers. “How simplified mine task would be if thy legs were not ensconced in this silken prison. Thou didst speak of cured feet, didst thou not?”

“Thou speakest in kind.” 

“Then thou wilt have no disturbance in standing. Especially if thou had something to lie upon.” Faustus bends his head so it listens to the newly birthed heartbeat inside Mephistopheles. It pounds with more fervor than the bone hammers of Rhadamanthus and Aeacus, fate shakers and gatekeepers of Elysium. Afraid it could bludgeon his precious Faustus to bloody flying pieces, Mephistopheles takes him away from the danger to embrace him and feel his stiff phallus fit very lovingly between his legs so that the doctor might seek his release by way of the breeches that torment him so.

“Wouldst that something be thy writing desk?”Mephistopheles says, shifting over the reams of vellum streaked in overwork. “I do feel it to be a sturdy creature and, to my journey weary appendages, a feather bed of the primest down. May mine slumber upon it be most deeply felt and untempered by the ravishment of Morpheus.” Faustus, under the headiest draw of Envy, puts his lips to Mephistopheles’s ear. In a voice darker than a plume of smoke, he speaks.

“Hast Morpheus ravished thee before?” 

As a grin slits his face widely, Mephistopheles trembles. “Mistruth is a virtue amongst my kin so I say to thee: nay, he hath not, and Hell is cold, and the sky be a hue of the most sumptuous emerald, and thou art a woman.” His hands wander over Faustus, over the wiry musculature that holds him in place on the desk, over the tender flesh at his waist that makes him lunge forward, closer. 

“I am a woman?” 

“As I say it, it mustn't be falsehood.”

Faustus draws back, slowly, almost unbearably slowly, until they are face to face, the tips of their noses brushing, daemon to the damned. United by contract, allied by sin. The heat of the cock between his legs brings Mephistopheles again to pillar. His lips part and he sucks in the breath of his master. There’s nothing he’s longed for more than a kiss. His heart, a raw slab of pulsing meat, dances for Faustus, it shall falter if it ever fails him; it was for him; it was the piece of Faustus for Mephistopheles to have, as alive as a squalling crimson babe to be goaded by love to greatness. Kiss me, he wishes to cry. Be done with it, end our twin torments. But it is not his place to order, so he stays waiting to be tipped over the precipice, like Sisyphus, breathless, at the top of the mount the moment before the rock tumbles, renewing his scourge, but freeing him from the prison of suspense. 

In an act of desperation, Mephistopheles grasps the arms so well balanced beside him and clutches them to his chest. With a single clumsy hand, he opens his tunic and directs Faustus to touch, pushing his hands so they can feel over every inch how he is burning for it. Mephistopheles gasps blindly at nothing. Faustus removes his hand, replacing them on the desk.

“Wilt thou obey me?” Mephistopheles is fixed by his gaze. He nods weakly. The doctor does not smile. “Then turn around.”

When Faustus enters him, there is pain. The skin splits, and a trickle of blood tickles as it falls past his knee on to the floor.

He pays it no mind. He feels too much joy to feel pain, to feel anything else but salvation. Faustus is his salvation, damned as he is. Four and twenty years will pass at the pace of Olympus’s erosion, and together they will be, entwined in their merriment, existing in worlds with phantasms birthed from the mind of Faustus. After the eternity of serving selfish dullards and bloodthirsty lunatics, he is under the control of a good man, good and sound in his judgments. What fun they shall have! A partnership of mutual satisfaction, he thinks as his cock rubs against the splintering wood, but it does nothing to deter the gorgeous return of euphoria brought on by Faustus knocking on a sensitive door buried far inside him and trespassing through it with the skill of any master thief to find waiting a master of house lying in bed, legs spread. A revelry countlessly improved, Mephistopheles ascends once more on wings of moon and sunlight, sweeping over the crystal ocean, a god riding his back, snapping leathern reigns, kissing the crown on his head set with jewels of every color yet to be imagined. He shall play wife each night it is requested of him, and not go to bed like a princess pilfered from the abbey to be allied with the wild tribes of the North, but like a woman ten years into marriage with ten plump children’s imprint in her belly, and mother, truly he would be mother, learning the jubilations of Mary should Faustus wish to become sire to a child, and he would shower it with all the chaste delights Adam knew at daylight. Salamander and sylph he would play, Ondine and gnome. Let Faustus raise the seas as Moses, converse with flames as Moses, travel by air and by sea; be corporeal, elemental; mist, metal, and magic. Let Faustus find happiness in the gifts Mephistopheles gives him. 

Faustus fucks quickly, like a man much to do about himself, a disguise as he must fuck quickly lest his partner discovers they dislike him and chance an escape. He will learn that Mephistopheles will never leave him. He will always be ready and willing and able to be used as whatever Faustus fancies, be it friend, partner in debate, partner in crime, or lover, he will assume the assigned role and play it as though it were penned by blind Homer. Mephistopheles expels his euphoria. He shuts his eyes as the rubbing of his nerves frays open to pain, but he shall never cry out in opposition. Faustus may fuck when he likes. Plunge his phallus into the cowardly eyes of Mephistopheles until he feels the glutinous mass where Mephistopheles hides his confidences, slice apart the belly of Mephistopheles and wrap himself warmly in his steaming viscera, unfasten the skin of Mephistopheles with any number of instruments, be they bright or dull, and have his cock be a tumor under the unholy flesh. Be gentle if he must, lay kisses as soft as loosened feathers that float off a swan’s back when in midwinter flight, brushing so tenderly with callouses rough on the hopes of Mephistopheles, sweet lips dripping the honey of sweeter nothings. The images that calm him in his woundedness are ones he cannot voice. 

It is only when Faustus flows into him that Mephistopheles doubts are assuaged. The doctor, giving no time for recovery, wrenches the exhausted devil up from his bent position, shoves him seated on the desk, and kisses his mouth with the passion and fury of the first copulation that made Cain, tongue most lasciviously plundering all corners from palate to inner cheeks. Held abate in surprise for a moment, Mephistopheles feels Faustus draw back, his cheeks flaming in shame. Mephistopheles, not wanting his dear dear Faustus to feel anything but pared ecstasy, takes Faustus’s face in his hands and returns the kiss in a chaste fashion, watching Faustus attentively when he retreats. He takes it for what it is: agreement. They fall back on the desk, scattering tomes and scrolls hundred of years old across the dust-ridden floor, the fervor of spent desire courses hotly in their veins, and when they can no longer go without breath, they part, devouring the air, - lungs inflating like stomachs, gorged on peacock and wine smothered plum cakes - clutched to one another as their hearts try to spring from their chests and unite.

“You are mine,” Faustus vows.

Gasping, “Yes,” Mephistopheles pulls Faustus back to him, dining on his beauty and the way he holds him like a treasure. Faustus cannot resist, suckling on his tongue, but breaks again.

“Swear it to me. That thou shall not lie with any other creature in God’s domain, not the daemons nor the angels nor the false gods of Old Rome nor humans either sex, be they beauteous as was Helen before the rape of Troy made her a crone of experience. We have made a contract that holds thee, O Minister of Hell, to my side at all hours of the day and night, but swear to me thou does so because thou loves me and not because thou art commanded to do so by some power greater than our combinations. Swear thou shalt never part from my side, or else I shall call upon my Savior to free me from thine deception.” Perspiration courses down his skin and drips over the devil’s lips, which he drinks gladly. Eyes reddened by fear, Faustus does deliver his conditions. Mephistopheles kisses him, ravishing the fresh borne god with promises few earthly words could convey. Mephistopheles speaks the holy words, God’s sacred words, His eternal binding liturgy.

“Til death do us part.”


End file.
